Marcus Oakdale Cinema — Local services in Oakdale

The movie theater itself is phenomenal in every way imaginable. The turnover in regards to staff is unknown, but the few regulars I have gotten to see over the years at this location are true centerpieces. As a long time customer of this theater I finally needed to speak up and say something about how kind, genuine, friendly, and motivated the staff "seems" we all know the struggle of customer service jobs and I'm sure these humans do not get payed enough to deal with the onslaught of scrutiny and rudeness while having to contemplate whether it's worth it or not making minimum wage. I went to go see Uncharted yesterday and the only issue I ran into (yet again) was the purchasing of a ticket through the MT app, but the employees right off the bat were super happy and bubbly. I love seeing movies alone here and there's always one employee who seems down about their job everywhere I go. If they're doing their job correctly, then I'd usually go out of my way to cheer them up, crack a joke, or tip them on the sly. The 3 employees who made an impact on my day yesterday: This sweet mother working the front counter whilst having to ensure people have their tickets, who since there wasn't a line, mentioned how much she liked the movie I was going to see and how I picked the exact seat she would've. We chatted for a little while longer and she just made me genuinely feel welcomed and at home. I ordered a Jr popcorn and this woman asked how I wanted it and I said how you'd make yours and she didn't hesitate, then she asked politely if she could correct my stupidity (my words, not hers) by offering me the free popcorn versus the Jr. and I naturally said yes please. She did all of this with grace and such fluidity that I could tell she was the glue behind the counter, so I tipped them more than I payed for my large soda. Lastly, as soon as the movie was over there were these employees who were waiting patiently to get to work on cleaning up after the slobs who destroy the theaters (I'm no saint considering buttery popcorn is a pain at times). As the lights came on, i looked around and proceeded to pay attention to the mess they had to clean up. These employees flew in and started cleaning efficiently and seemingly mindlessly. It sincerely bothered me how these humans are all so genuinely efficient at their jobs, smile/laugh, and are very kind, but the Billions of dollars in revenue made yearly by MT isn't necessarily distributed in a manner of fairness. The least big companies like this could do is treat the grunts more like family by creating little fun games with prizes to make their customer service jobs worthwhile, offer trips to movie premiers, or pay increases to employees of the month. Something to make it so people don't feel bad for watching zombies clean up after a bunch of lazy slobs, having to deal with rudeness/impatience of customers, and/or the boredom and lack of a challenge customer service jobs offer. I've been to 5 MT locations and this one is by far the best. The Marcus family puts gigantic emphasis on customer satisfaction. Well, here's me stating that I want to see more employee satisfaction. They deserve more incentives to do better hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly only to be challenged more and to maybe enjoy their jobs even a little more than they may or may not already. Having worked/supervised/trained in customer service jobs since I was 14...I've seen it all. I'm only 31, but I love seeing everyone happy.

Yours truly

A forever MT...

I really much rather be able to explain my frustrations directly, however it seemed like the staff last night did not want to hear it and instead, the one girl (who I wasn't able to get the name of) decided to be condescending and rude to our whole theatre of frustrated moviegoers instead of listening to our very valid complaints. On Aug 28th we went to go see the 7pm showing of The Crow (not bad actually. A little different than what I expected but I didn't hate it.). At only 15 min left of the movie, the projector shut off due to power failure. We had just had bad storms the night before and lots of businesses were struggling with power glitches. No big deal, we all understood. A man was heard in our hall on his walkie saying "I'll start with 16." (our theatre) and came in, apologized for the delay and told us what was going on, saying that the film should be back up in about 5 minutes and they would restart it from where it left off so we could see the end. Here is where the 2 stars comes in. We sat in a near pitch black theatre for 50 minutes until they were able to get the screen back on with zero communication and no indication they had any plans to finish our movie. At 1 hour and the trailers for the 945 film already starting we all left the theatre and waited outside in the hall to speak with someone. Empty. There was no staff to be found except the ticket takers in the lobby. Finally we heard a walkie and around the corner walks a girl who I would have assumed was a supervisor of some kind but she never identified herself or acted much like one. I was polite, yet clearly upset. I knew it wasn't her fault so I wasn't about to take it out on her. However as a manager of the theatre, I would have expected her to at least listen to what I had to say before treating me and the rest of the patrons with me like children. I asked her if she knew what was going on because we'd been sitting there in the dark for an hour, and she immediately got on the defensive about running around and projectors and then said "if you would turn around, you'd see it was already playing. I can show you if you'd like". Thankfully someone much more confrontational than me replied to her with "that's not our movie and I don't have another hour to wait for someone to forget about us again just to see the last 15 mins of the one I paid to see. Can we get a voucher or something because this really is ridiculous." The employee clearly just assumed we were waiting to see the 945 show instead of being still there from the 7pm show and got very snappy and huffy about 'impatience' but walked us all to the ticket counter to get us apology voucher for a free movie. I'm sorry, I understand the situation is frustrating for the theatre to deal with but the fact is that you forgot about a whole theatre full of people that were more than happy to wait 60 minutes just to see the last 10 of the film they paid to see and then treated them like they should be grateful that a completely different movie was now playing in the theatre they waited in. Horrible communication with patrons, terrible attitude when all we wanted was information and acknowledgment. So that is why this was a 2...

This is a very nostalgic place for me but today was a horrible experience even though I've been coming here for years. I ordered up one of the hot dog combos and all they put on my receipt was a hot dog so when I go to pick up my hot dog which took them about 15 to 20 minutes to make I said hey where are my french fries The young girl behind the counter said did you order the combo? I said Yes I order the combo I would like my fries with my hot dog and she said can I please see your receipt. I said sure I have it right here it's going to show you I got the combo so I pulled out my receipt and I handed it to her and I look at it and gee what do you know, the lady who asked me if I wanted the combo didn't know what she was doing at the cash register and only put me down for a hot dog so I said that's fine can you just give me some fries or if you really need me to I will just pay for them separately so she said well you know what here I'll take this hot dog back and go talk to the manager over there in the blue shirt and he can give you a refund and I told her no I don't want a refund I want my hot dog and I also want fries I can pay for the fries separately and she said well I'm sorry you'll have to go talk to him and she took my hot dog back and I was really pissed after that. And before I even came over there to get my order The lady at the register was very very quiet and put off and kind of rude and had no customer service skills and was being grouchy and not even looking and talking to me or even acknowledging me and treating me like I was just a huge burden even though I was going out of my way to be friendly and nice. I literally got no reaction from her at all no customer service in the least bit, just a very cold unhappy person who hates their job. So why the heck wouldn't the person who just gave me the hot dog just give me a quick order of fries and then boom problem solved I guess if you want to save a couple dollars then you could say well you got to go pay for it up there but you could have still let me keep part of my order that they screwed up and I still would have been honest and paid for it or you could have just learned some customer service and chalked up your losses and just threw a handful of fries in there to get me out of your hands because I told you my movie has already started and I've been here for over 20 minutes now but for some reason the young girl working at the food counter where you pick up orders just froze up and didn't know how to talk to me and just decided to take my hot dog back so I had to talk to the manager in the blue shirt and he took care of me he did a great job he got me another fresh burger dog with my order of fries and some ketchup and I got exactly what I wanted he didn't upcharge me or make me pay more for it he just did the right thing "customer service" and said hey here you go here's your fries and what you wanted. Well the sad thing is that girl that took that hot dog away that would have just fed somebody but nope right into the garbage bin trash unbelievable so thank you younger white manager guy wearing the blue shirt by the main entrance who helped me out today I...